Games played entirely in the imagination are a hard sell. To successfully construct scenes, a player needs solid cultural touchstones, a strong visual identity, and a sense of which beats make up a dramatic scene. Cainthe new tabletop role-playing game from Tom Bloom (co-creator of Lancer and webcomic writer Kill six billion demons), offers the best hook a person can get: It’s Chainsaw man meet The X fileswhere players collect clues left behind after a supernatural crisis event and eradicate the monster that caused the crisis.
Cain casts players as exorcists – psychics recruited, trained and employed by Cain, a supra-governmental force that controls paranormal phenomena. The mission is simple: enter the crisis zone and eradicate sin, a monster manifested through human trauma.
“I would compare the atmosphere very well with (Neon Genesis) Evangelion,” Bloom told Polygon in a recent interview. “There’s a huge, supernatural problem that’s completely beyond human control, and we have a huge, underworld-like organization that’s sending paranormal super soldiers onto it. It’s a bit SCP Foundationa bit of XCOM.”
Like its predecessors in the history of horror-tinged secret organizations (Chainsaw manpublic safety, Evangelion‘s NERV, the eponymous Foundation of the SCP), Cain enjoys the crushing horror of bureaucracy. Exorcists are ‘tools of Cain’, they live on company land and are paid in company money (a week’s supervised absence costs 15 scrips; successfully performing a sin earns you five). Cain has one goal: to erase the stain of human sin, whatever the cost.
While Cain may seem like pure investigative horror, Bloom considers it more of a supernatural shonen anime Demon slayer And Jujutsu Kaisen. “The pace of it is that there’s a research period where you learn what’s going on and you might get into a few scuffles with the opponent, and then in the climactic fight you use those previous experiences of what you’re fighting for. an advantage,” says Bloom. “I tried to make sure that the research phase would actually be important in the fight, and I’m quite happy with that. I don’t think you can do that in a game where your main opponents aren’t made up of human trauma.”
Cain‘s missions play out like the monster-of-the-week shows that inspired him. Exorcists enter a new location and are briefed on the big picture: what kind of sin they’re chasing, what caught Cain’s attention in the first place, and so on. As their investigation progresses, players may encounter manifestations of Sin during combat, or face more mundane obstacles in their investigation, such as law enforcement officers or paranormal documentary crews, before locating Sin’s home and executing them.
The game is explained through scenes described by the administrator (the formal name given to Cain‘s game master), in which players list their actions and roll dice to determine the success of something risky. The higher a character’s skill, the larger the dice pool from which he draws successes. As the investigation continues, the administrator imposes increasingly greater consequences – killing non-player characters, sending low-level minions to the players – until the sin turns into a catastrophic threat.
Cain‘s dice system is the key to maintaining this narrative tension. “Other games make your character improve over time,” Bloom said. “But the problem is that this pushes the odds of the dice so heavily in your favor that it sucks the tension out of the game.” In CainNo matter how many characters advance, rolls always carry risk in the form of an individual die rolled by the administrator to determine the consequences. As a result, no hunt will ever be without complications.
As exorcists use their powers, they come closer to manifesting an image, their own version of a sin. Quite consciously, it’s almost impossible to prevent that trauma, so each outing brings the player numerically closer to becoming the very thing he’s meant to destroy. It’s another reference point for series like Chainsaw man And Leaf.
“In a sense, you are what you hunt,” Bloom said. “You are used to fight fire with fire. There is an inherent tension in it.”
This battle between individual empathy and bureaucratic callousness is a major hallmark of it Cain‘s art. Bloom calls it “stickercore,” inserting memos and ID cards into the book where a reader would expect standard text boxes, and creating a rift between the real world and the fiction.
“Why does manga get away with just being black and white?” Bloom said. “Well, that’s because they have a screen tone, and the screen tone adds texture. (…) It had a certain aesthetic associated with manga: manga has a screen tone because they print on cheap paper.”
This manga inspiration extends to Cain‘s characters, dressed in a striking mix of streetwise fashion, combat gear and everyday office wear. It’s a great microcosm of it Cain‘s stories, featuring stylish exorcists and gruesome Sins clashing against barren landscapes.
The end result is that with just a handful of photobashed illustrations and some creative typing, Cain has an unparalleled visual identity. It is a much-needed foundation on which Cain builds his emotional core. The exorcists, gothic psychics absorbed into a faceless organization beyond their control or understanding, require no extra work to create compelling stories. Are compelling stories, waiting for players to inhabit them. Proudly worn inspirations, inspired visual choices and a dice system that refuses to let up on the pressure – all create the astonishing feeling that Cain is a game that actually has a lot to say.
“A lot of what we do in society in general is just improvement. It has nothing to do with curative justice,” Bloom said. “I wanted to make a game that was about that conversation. This person is suffering from this huge social problem, but what are you going to do about the current situation? Are you going to follow and carry out your orders, or are you going to spare this person and suffer the consequences? I think that’s an interesting question, and I hope that people who play this game will find that interesting too.”
Cain is now available on Jeuk.io.